Historical evolution of preposition stranding in Chinese: Another case of cyclic change?

ABSTRACT: A number of cyclical changes have already been noted in the historical evolution of some syntactic structures of Chinese. The phenomenon of preposition stranding could be an additional example. Preposition stranding refers to a syntactic construction in which a preposition is left without a following object. This kind of construction is commonly found in English (where it usually occurs at the end of the sentence), but also in other Germanic languages or dialects, and also in some languages belonging to the Niger-Congo family, but it is almost non-existent in standard Mandarin. However, we can find stranded, hanging or dangling prepositions in contemporary various dialects, such as in the Zhangjiakou dialect (Hebei Province). It is also assumed that preposition stranding was quite common in Archaic Chinese up to the Early Medieval Chinese period. However, no systematic analysis has been done yet on these former stages of the Chinese language, and especially for Early Medieval and Late Medieval Chinese, when the Classical Chinese prepositions (comitative, instrumental, locative, ablative, allative, dative, etc.) yǐ and yú have become obsolete and have been replaced by other prepositions. This article tries to fill this gap and to show that there has been the following typological evolution from Archaic to Contemporary Chinese: [more preposition stranding] > [less preposition stranding] > [more preposition stranding] 摘要: 一 些 汉 语 句 法 结 构 的 历 史 演 变 已 经 被 论 证 为 循 环 演 化 (cyclical changes)，介词悬空现象(preposition stranding)或可视为又一例证。 所谓介词悬空，是指一种介词后不出现宾语的句法结构。这种结构在 英语中十分常见(介词通常出现在句末)，也见于其他日耳曼语及其方 言，以及部分尼日尔—刚果语系语言；但在现代普通话中几乎不存 在。然而，一些当代汉语方言，如河北张家口方言，仍可见到介词悬 空(stranded)、悬置(hanging)或悬垂(dangling)的现象。此外，一般认 为，介词悬空在上古汉语至中古早期阶段曾相当普遍。然而，对于早 期汉语的这一现象，迄今尚缺乏系统研究，尤其是中古早期和中古晚 期。这一时期正是古汉语介词——如兼表伴随、工具、处所、离格、 趋向、与格等语义功能的"以""于"等——逐渐废弃，并被其他介词 取代的重要阶段。本文旨在填补这一研究空白，并论证从上古汉语到 现代汉语，介词悬空现象经历了如下类型学演变：多介词悬空 → 少 介词悬空 → 多介词悬空。